


Little Laetan Lost

by SadMageCentral



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dialogue Heavy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Inquisitor & Dorian Pavus Friendship, Self-Esteem Issues, Tevinter Culture and Customs, Tevinter Inquisitor (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 08:07:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18133136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadMageCentral/pseuds/SadMageCentral
Summary: A collection of drabbles about Cassia Trevalis, a Laetan (mage of commoner origin) from Tevinter, who travelled south as a humble scribe in the employ of a member of the Venatori, and then stumbled upon the strange ritual that she had no idea was being planned and that gave her the Mark. Shy and timid by nature, Cassia has a long history of emotional abuse, first by the highborn youngsters she studied with at the Circle, and now by southerners, who have little faith in a Herald of Andraste hailing from the accursed Imperium. But hopefully, her new friends will help her gain more strength.





	1. Where Is Home?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AntivanCrafts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntivanCrafts/gifts).



The night is quiet, save for a dulled pulse that comes from Cassia’s own chest and stomach. It is sickening to listen to it, as she lies and stares up at the ceiling of the tiny cottage allotted to her, stiff as a Nevarran mummy - but it beats falling asleep.

Because the sooner she tumbles off into the Fade, with none of Solas’ natural gracefulness or the perfectly poised, alert sharpness of Madame Vivienne, the sooner the hours left before the dawn will fly by, all smudged together by the dreamworld’s green haze… And the sooner she will wake up to another day of being gawked and pointed at, of having her innards curl into an aching knot and her palms and neck grow wet with dread-squeezed sweat, as the common folk of the Fereldan Hinterlands whisper, egged on by the Chantry sisters, that she is a maleficar. A heretic. A godless magister usurping the holy title of the Herald of Andraste… A title that she never even asked for in the first place; how can you ask for waking up in prison, with your hand set on fire, and with your head heavy and foggy and cracking apart under the strain of fumbling for memories that aren’t there?

‘Nothing you can do about it,’ Cremisius told her, in a garbled mix of the Trade Tongue and ‘pig’s Tevene’ that she would hear dance off the stained walls and loose cobblestones in the slums where she grew up, and that fell like music upon her ears.

‘You can talk about social classes till you are blue in the face, but so long as you are a mage, the southerners will think you are a magister. I mean, sometimes they think I am a magister if I don’t swing my war hammer hard enough in their faces! Which is kinda hilarious because the Chargers actually have… uh… no mages of our own. None whatsoever’.

So long as she is a mage. So long as she is a mage. The very magic that, back in the Imperium, was not enough to bring her family out of poverty to the life of glamour and luxury that the legends promised, and was less than not enough to earn her the respect of her fellow Circle students, bred with care like prized orchids, destined to inherit their parents’ seats at the Magisterium while she could not hope to become more than a lowly clerk - this very magic, here in the south, is enough for people to think her a monster. A brand new role for her to play, just as exhausting as the role of the family disappointment, or the role of the gutter rat deluded enough (at first) to think that she could make friends with the sons and daughters of the highborn.

Resting her hand on her chest to press that stupid pulse down, Cassia shuts her eyes.

‘I want to go home,’ she whispers weakly, a tear rolling down her cheek - even though she has no idea where 'home’ is any longer.


	2. New Glasses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassia has poor eyesight, and Varric and Josephine have pulled some strings to procure a rare device that will improve her ability to see, and complement her Halamshiral outfit too - which prompts an emotional conversation with Vivienne.

‘Ah, yes,’ Vivienne gracefully inclines her head in a small satisfied nod, and lifts the delicately crafted glasses, with a gilded frame wrought into a garland of prophet’s laurel, off the velvet cushion where they rested in their box.

‘These are much, much better than the usual round lenses you wear around Skyhold. They will complement the formal wear splendidly. Josephine reports that the updated uniform will be back from the tailor’s shortly; do get yourself ready for the fitting, darling. And a little spa and face peel afterwards, of course. The Inquisition representatives will not be wearing masks - a clear statement that we are above the Game. Your attire and complexion will have to be flawless’.

Cassia, who has been watching the Enchanter from her chair, perched on its very edge with her back hunched into a sad crescent and her hands hanging listlessly between her knees, looks up and knits her bushy (not for long now, if Vivienne has her way) eyebrows together.

'Will it really be mine, though?’ she asks quietly.

'How do you mean, darling?’ Vivienne freezes, glasses still in hand (which has one little finger extended, golden nail polish shimmering in the firelight).

'Have you found a doppelganger to play your part at the ball?’

'It will certainly feel like it,’ Cassia says bitterly, a sob beginning to mount in her voice. 'This… flawless person you will parade before the court… That’s not me’.

Vivienne gives her an unimpressed, half-lidded look.

'You can’t expect the Orlesian Empress to listen to the counsel of a bumbling child who apologizes to furniture she runs into’.

'That’s what I am, though,’ Cassia blurts out, so upheaved by emotion that she even manages to straighten up a little. 'That’s all I have ever been. For years, I gave tried fooling myself into thinking that I was special, only to be hit in the face with a reminder that I am not, and it does not do to pretend because it makes me stupid’.

Vivienne makes a subtle but still evident cringing grimace: outbursts of feelings are very, very unbecoming for a lady in a position of power. Dangerous even, should the wrong parties take advantage of them. But Cassia, much as she is usually in wordless awe of the Enchanter, has gotten too carried away to shut herself up with an awkward flush like she usually does.

'When I came into my magic, my family thought I would bring them honour and respect and prosperity, like in fairy tales,’ she shares breathlessly, getting up with a clumsy flap of her arms. 'But the other students at the Circle insulted and shunned me at best, or at worst pretended to like me as a cruel joke, and the one teacher who was not disgusted by my “Soporati stench” later went mad and sold himself to Corypheus and tried to kill me, so he does not count. Then, after I became a scribe and went south with my master and woke up in Haven, people started talking about how I was the Herald of Andraste, and I thought Maker… The fairy tales are finally coming true… I have been chosen… Called upon to make the world a better place… But now we know that I was wrong… Again… I was not chosen… I simply stumbled through the wrong door and picked up a shiny orb… I am not the Herald. I am not even a proper Tevinter mage like Dorian. I am a servant. A stupid, incompetent servant at that. All my so-called successes, I owe to ridiculous accidents’.

After she runs out of breath and gulps her way into a strained silence, Vivienne watches her for a moment, one eyebrow quirked. The unimpressed look still lingers - but presently, something in her eyes softens, and she slides one perfectly manicured hand under Cassia’s chin, tilting her head up so she can look into her widened, reddish eyes.

'You are far too fond of wallowing in misery for your own good, darling,’ she says, not unkinldy. 'You have been toyed with by fortune a great deal, true, but fortune alone is not enough to last on top as long as you have. Being special is not a state, it’s an action; and you have been acting… With little grace perhaps, but nonetheless. Most of those who flock to our banner may believe in the fairy tale, in the Herald of Andraste - and let them believe, darling, if that puts their mind at ease. But there are also those who believe… in you’.


	3. Angry Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassia receives an angry letter from the Hero of Ferelden (who belongs to AntivanCrafts) regarding the sealing of darkspawn tunnels with boards, and does not take it well.

**[A letter written in an unsteady, impatient hand prone to pressing too hard into the page at intervals]**

**Inquisitor. We need to talk about the boards you used to block off the deep roads.**

**[The word 'block' here has been underlined enough times that it scored the page].**

**Reinforce that shit or I will. And you won't like it.**

 

* * *

 

 

Inquisitor Cassia almost plasters herself all over one of the reading desks at the library, as she presses her nose into the scratched, half-torn sheet and scans it over and over again with her nearsighted eyes (she really should use those spectacle thingies Varric obtained for her through his Merchants’ Guild contracts, but the artefact just seems too precious, like something an Altus professor would wear while grading the work of Minrathous Circle students; much too precious to waste on the likes of her). The longer she reads, the more her eyes brim over with tears - and not just because of the strain. She doesall she can to contain the whimpering noises at the back of her throat, but, as (ill) luck would have it, one manages to escape just as Dorian passes by, scowling at some southern book as he strides towards his favourite armchair, the guiding force of habit strong enough that he does not have to look up… Until he hears Cassia’s strangled squeak, that is.

‘More hate mail?’ he asks, eyebrow quirked, in a tone that is both teasing and sympathetic. The question is in the Trade Tongue; but his next conspiratory murmur is in Tevene.

‘Do you need help setting it on fire?’

Cassia starts and blinks rapidly.

She understands what Dorian has said - but, being a commoner, always a hair’s breadth away from slavery, and scarcely literate before her magic manifested and her social status received a dubious upgrade from Soporati to Laetan, she does not really know the words of the ancestral tongue she would need to use in reply. So she switches back to Thedas’ common speech, hoarsely and through a clogged up nose.

'It’s much worse,’ she says dejectedly, running her sweating hand along the bristling back of her head. 'I have… angered the Hero of Ferelden. The Hero of Ferelden! Because of how I’ve been sealing those darkspawn passages! I was just…’

Her voice thins into a wail.

'I was in a hurry to get it done, because the darkspawn are so terrifying, and there was all this heavy rock over my head… I couldn’t… I just wanted to block them off, and rush outside for air… I thought it would be enough… But it wasn’t… What - what if the Hero learns I am from Tevinter? Then it will look like I did a shoddy job on purpose! Gave the darkspawn a chance to come back… Cackling evilly all the way!’

She chokes on her own weepy voice and forcefully claps her hand against her mouth. When her fingers finally slip down her chin, she exhales shakily and bursts into jumbled apologies.

'I am sorry, I… I forgot my place again. I know I should not complain to my betters’.

Dorian’s brow knots tightly.

'I am not better than you,’ he says earnestly. 'Well, I do have a better sense of style, but other than that… You know you are not a cowering scribe at a magister’s heel any more. Being frightened all the time is such a sorry waste, don’t you think? How about you just head back out there and reinforce the darkspawn tunnels - take your favourite hairy lummox, maybe that dwarf from the Bull’s Chargers, the one who likes explosions so much. I myself will be willing to get some dirt on my impeccable boots for your sake. And we can cackle evilly all the way - just for fun’.


End file.
